The sky was incredibly blue. So deep blue with amazing puffs of white that drift along floating by. In resonance with the clouds, I bobbed up and down in the water, water that had that weedy mud smell that resovouirs seem to have. My little orange life vest hugged me and I bobbed with hair a mass of tentacles surrounding my head.
Off to one side giant cliffs of white limestone rose out of the water. lines of interspersed color splahed along the surface of the limestone. At the top of the cliffs, trees peered over to see us down below bobbing in the water. And of course always present was the buttery, golden, baking sun, an unchanging feature of the Texas landscape.
Funny thing about Texas. We only have two real lakes (so I've heard.) The rest were reservoirs created by damming up the ever flooding rivers that crisscross the state. It was amazing when I moved up north to see houses built right next to big broad thick rivers. In Texas our rivers are puny little dried up creatures. People throw trash in them, or fish out tiny rainbow colored perch, but certainly there are no barges or boats or drawbridges for that matter. And certainly no one builds houses next to our rivers. Our little puny rivers are caged by massive hills a hundred feet tall and at least a quarter of a mile on either side of the river. These massive hills surround a tiny puny dribble of a river-at least until it rains.
Within minutes during a big storm, the puny rivers becomes frothing, brown monsters. Before the hills in ft. Worth were built my grandmaw said she saw the entire downtown area flooded to the forth floor of the montgomery ward building. Downtown Ft.Worth was a lake just for a bit. If you ever drive through Dallas or Ft. Worth you will see the hugs hills that bank the various branches of the Trinity River. If you drive along 30 from one city to another, you'll encounter Arlington, shopping mecca with more retail establishments per square mile than any other city in America. Then you hit this empty zone. The highway stands out above it and it is kinda flat and empty of houses and such. When it rains you understand why as the whole place becomes a big mud puddle.
So at any rate, the rivers, and water itself, are slightly more menacing for the avarage Texan than say for the New Yorker or Michigander. Thus the resoviors were born, as a source of energy and a way to control the flooding rivers.
Funny thing about a resovior , is that far underneath the surface, you still kinda have a river. It comes in one side, and if the dam is open it goes out the other side. A bit like the jet stream only far below the water.
So there I sit in a resovoir, surrounded by family, both human and my Texan family made of rock sun and water.
My aunts are there. I don't know them very well. They like horses and I love horses so I think they are neat, but from a bit of a distance as I am really a very shy kid. My two cousins are there, floating in my vicinity. They are funny and friendly. Joy who is a bit more restrained and Marlina who later became a buety pagent contestant and laughed a lot. But they aren't laughing. They are crying. I can't find my dad. I know he is around somewhere, but you know how life jackets are. They push your head forward so it is hard to turn, especially when you are little. My sister is somewhere but I don't know where. She is smaller than me but I love her. Off to the far line of my vision my aunts fiance is in the water too. He was the first place I ever learned the word fiance. He seems very sick but I don't understand why.
Ahhh, the family reunion. It was the family reunion. The ever ubiquitous green bean cassarole, fried chicken, blood red beets and a never ending assortment of pasta and potato salads. All on the shores of the beautiful lake whitney, grateful resovior to the sweet Brazos River. Only one of many I assume. My dad loves boats and cars. He comes to pick us up from my mom in his blue truck mostly, but sometimes he comes in his white cadillac convertible. We always stop at Dairy Queen and get ice cream cones however. The ones dipped in chocolate. Mom said he would spend hours and hours in the old garage working on the cars. When they would fight, she would scream and scream, and even throw things at him. Off he would go to the shed to work on the cars, till she simmered a bit. Eventually she dumped him for some other guy who was more exciting.
Today my daddy brought out his new boat. It was white with red inside it. The last boat had been brown with blue interior I think. He had traded and borrowed to get the new boat, as I guess it was better. We run around the family reunion meeting all the odd, unfamiliar people. So many relatives. Then we all go out on the lake in the boat.
When you are in a boat, you fly across the water and if you hit the rough spots, where other boats have left wakes, you bounce up and down a bit. Always surrounded by the muddy resovior water smell. Funny thing about resoviors is that they just fill in the big valley around the river. They don't cut down the trees or move anything thing that is there, they stop the river and wait for the valley to fill, So sometimes, especially near the shallow areas, you see trees coming out of the water. Skeletal and dead of course but trees all the same. Seems on that day, that butter yellow family reunion day we might have met up with a tree. No one ever really knew.
Flying along in the water, but there was water by my feet. The floor was coming apart-into pieces. The square floorboard pieces were floating and we were no longer afloat. Soon we were all bobbing in the water, confused and enclosed by white rocks, blue sky and muddy grey blue water. Seems like my dadddy shoulda got a better boat. I vaguely recall the boat sinking below the surface. Only vaguely.
My daddy had been holding me while he drove. So he held me while we sank. At first as we bobbed he was behind me. That's why I couldn't see him. The water was in my mouth for a bit and I choked as I went under, then I popped back up. Somebody had their hand on my foot.
We all sat and waited. For what? I am far to little to know. I am scared but my family is close by and they will take care of me. The fiance is choking and gagging on the water. Turns out he wasn't wearing a lifejacket. He was lucky . he almost drowned. His mirror fiance held him up as she was wearing a lifejacket. It apprears that the river running under the surface of the lake was a bit close that day. It also turns out that Lake Whitney is well known for it's victims, like sacrifices it pulls them down, into the murky darkness, so calm and peaceful there.
A boat arrives. An old silver fishing boat. They pull up the drowning fiance first. Then we, being the future generation, are pulled in one by one, little soaked dolls with sraggely brown and blond tendils clinging to us. Another boat comes and gets all the aunts. So we all return to shore. They are crying and sobbing, which I don't understand. We have been saved, by the silver fishing baot. We are out of the water. Later it seems , upon counting heads thrirteen went out but only twelve returned. The cousins, the aunts, the sister and the fiance were accounted for. It seems the only two had been without lifejackets and one had a fiance to hold him up. The other only had a tiny little smidgen girl, in a tiny little lifevest only meant to hold up fifty pounds, not two hundred. When the river under the water came alive, and pulled at our feet as we sank into the water, all the swimming imaginable was useless.
What goes through your mind, in those slow, lightening fast seconds. You sink and you hold on to what will keep you afloat, realizing, you will pull it down with you. Maybe only a few feet, enough to save you as you kick and splutter to the surface for the occasional breath. It however doesn't understand and would need more than an occasionally breath. So you begin to release it and it pops back to the surface, inces higher as you sink inches lower. Do you decide to let go or does instinct (or the opposite of instict) take over and make you release her? What do you think as your hand runs across her toes and she rises higher while you are pulled lower? You sink down so fast and of course struggle to get back to the surface. How long before you can no longer hold your breath. Not very long, as you are very upset and your body demands oxygen. The water rushes in and fills your lungs, and you should cough, but how do you cough when every breath is filled with water. How long do you suffer with pain as you can no longer breath before you black out and are claimed by the beast river. What are your last thoughts as this happens. Do you realize that you are going to die and give in or do you fight till the last second. Do you think of us bobbing high above you? Do you even have time to consider us in those last few moments?
I often wonder, do you watch over us, do you exist somewhere else, keeping us out of trouble. (Watch that little sister-she needs more help than me I think.) Even with crazy mum, it seems we will end up okay. We miss you, even the dumpling who never knew you. I never understood how much you loved me until I held my son one day, close to me. I knew that this was the way me dad felt about me, an intense, powerful urge to give everything to keep me safe. You felt joy to watch me walk, and talk, and felt sad when I cried. Now I cry so many years after the fact, because I miss you.
